By Carl Howe
New NPD estimates of US sales of video gaming consoles for the fourth quarter were as follows:XBox 360: 2,000,000
Nintendo Wii: 1,800,000
Sony Playstation 3: 750,000
Now, Blackfriars did some estimates back in December of the sales of XBox 360s and predicted that Microsoft (MSFT) had to sell about 4.1 million units in the holiday quarter to make its press release goal of selling 10 million units by the end of 2006. So the open question is how Microsoft did outside the US, since NPD's estimates are US-only.
Blackfriars' estimate is that international XBox 360 sales were only about another million units, meaning that XBox 360 sales are currently at about 8.9 to 9 million units as of the beginning of this year. Now this isn't a significant problem for Microsoft, since it probably just shipped another million units to retailers on December 31, since its press release explicitly counted units that were in transit or storage for subsequent sale. However, for video game producers and retailers, though, those units don't really count in the installed base.
Now Microsoft isn't the only company falling short here. Sony (SNE) had predicted selling 2 million PS3s this holiday season, and while it undoubtedly sold well in Japan, we estimate that supply constraints kept its total sales only to about a million or so world-wide.
(L to R) PS3, XBox 360 and Wii
But of course, the big winner here is Nintendo (NTDOY.PK), who managed to sell 1.8 million Wiis in the US last quarter with only six weeks of product availability. And when you add in Japanese sales, where Nintendo is much favored over Microsoft, odds are that Wii is actually outselling the XBox 360 world-wide at the moment.
NTDOY.PK 1-yr chart:
